Date:
March 7, 2010, Third Sunday in Lent
Author: The Rev. Dr. James D. Kegel
GRACE TO YOU AND PEACE FROM GOD OUR FATHER AND THE LORD AND SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST, AMEN.
I had never paid much attention to our reading from First Corinthians until my mother died in 1978. A co-worker, Ruth Halliday, gave me a devotional book to help me through a tough time and one of the devotions was centered on verse thirteen: “No temptation /testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful and he will not let you be tested/tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation/testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.” The verses were important to me and still are. God does not spare us times of trial. Difficult, tough times will come but they do not mean that we are being singled out or punished. It is simply a statement of fact. Bad things happen to good people. There is sickness and suffering and death. We may lose a job or your house burn down. Our friends may desert us or trouble within our family. As St. Peter writes, “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings so that you may also be glad and rejoice when his glory is revealed.” Testing, temptation, trial are not strange things but will happen to God’s people. Testing, temptation—the word is the same in the Greek—a time of trial will surely come. It came to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane when he prayed his heavenly Father that the cup might pass from him. He prayed so hard he sweat drops of blood. But he ended his prayer, with the words, “Not my will but Thine be done.” It is as Jesus taught us in the Lord’s Prayer, “Lead us not into temptation; do not put us to the test.” But then he taught us to pray, “Deliver us from evil.” We are not strong, but God is strong. We are not faithful but God is always faithful. And in St. Paul’s letter are these gracious words, “No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength.” This is God’s gracious promise for tough times. God is with you. God will not let you be tested beyond your strength. God will provide a way out of temptation for you.
In our pastors’ text study this week, a pastor remarked that this passage is not addressed to individuals but to the community. He had a point—the “you” is second person plural. Another pastor, well, you Pastor John, had a good point too in that communities are made up of individuals. I don’t think we should see a conflict in this passage between the individual who may be tempted and a community being tested. Both will happen. What I never could understand about God is why God made us so susceptible to temptation. I don’t know about you, but I am pretty much constantly tempted to break the commandments of God. Martin Luther once said that the most important commandment was the First: “I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other Gods before me.” And then the meaning: “We should fear, love and trust God above all things.” When we put ourselves in the place of God, then we immediately become prone to break all the others, to abuse God’s name, forget the Sabbath Day, to hate, to steal, to lie, to indulge in sexual immorality, to covet. Our passage from First Corinthians is a word of promise that God is faithful and will bless and keep us but also a challenge to us: If you are standing, watch out that you do not fall. Do not be complacent. Do not let up on trust and obedience and faith. Struggle against sin and keep on struggling, be diligent in the means of grace. Repent and turn back to God. Pray for strength to stand in the time of trial, to cling to God’s promises when times are tough.
St. Paul begins our passage with a review of the Exodus history. Now most of the Corinthian Christians may have been Gentile in background and not Jewish but the way Paul refers to events in the Old Testament means that he expects all believers to know their Bible history and to claim it as their own. The Church may be the New Israel but the examples of the old Israel are still important. Paul reads Christ into the events of the Exodus and the Exodus into the story of the Corinthians Christians. “I do not want you to be unaware, ignorant,” Paul writes. He is writing with a purpose. He has heard of the dissension within the Corinthian congregation and detects some spiritual pride and false security. “Remember the ancestors who were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea and were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.” What is Paul saying here? The Corinthian Christians were baptized. They had put on Christ, died to sin, and were called to live a new life. But being baptized did mean that they were now no longer susceptible to sin and weakness. They had been baptized but still had to live out their life in faith in Christ. Paul notes that the ancient Hebrews had been baptized too as they walked through the cloud of God’s presence and through the waters of the Red Sea. It is not such a strange allusion because in Judaism, converts were baptized in water just as the Christians were and some of the rabbis had used the events of the Exodus as a way to describe the baptism of all God’s people. But baptism is not enough.
Then Paul talked about the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. The Corinthians were misusing the Meal. The rich were coming early and eating and drinking their fill and the poor were being left out. It is not so much that they had a wrong sacramental theology but they were eating and drinking unworthily by dividing the community. The Israelites also had their spiritual food and drink—their manna from heaven and sweet water from the rock. Having been baptized through the parting of the waters they were fed sacramentally by God. In fact, Paul is saying that the rock was Christ who followed the Israelites through their wilderness journey. Again he is using an image from the rabbis. A Midrash says that the rock was God who went with them. The Mishnah explains that the rock was peripatetic, “So the well which was with Israel in the wilderness …traveled with them up the mountains and down again with them into the valleys.” Having crossed the Sinai wilderness with our Holy Land group last spring, I can understand that the rock of pure water must have followed them because there seemed to be little or no water in that desert. The only way the thousands of Hebrews could be fed was with spiritual food, manna from heaven, and the only way to slake their thirst, was spiritual water, from the rock which is God, which is Christ. To Paul, the pre-existent Christ was real. This is not only a typology although the events from Israel’s history are a type, an example, for Christians. But Christ was really present with the Israelites and Christ is really present with us now in the sacraments.
Some Christians have a doctrine called eternal security, sometimes called, “Once saved, always saved.” I am not sure that this is compatible with today’s text. The Israelites were elected by God. They were saved not through anything they did but through God’s grace alone. They were nurtured by God’s presence and fed with God’s food. But fall away they did and in droves. They craved evil according to Paul and broke the commandments starting with the first. They became idolaters and worshipped the Golden Calf. Along with that came porneia—sexual immorality and in the Bible idolatry and immorality always go together. The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play and dance. 23,000 died in Moab worshipping idols and cavorting with Moabite women. They tested God, tested Christ in Paul’s words, and were bitten by flaming serpents and died until Moses erected a bronze serpent, a type of Christ on the cross, that those who had been bitten by poisonous snakes could look on the pole and live. Murmuring and complaining was constant in the Hebrew camp and they were destroyed by the avenging angel—God’s messenger of death—and the earth swallowed them up. There was no eternal security. Whenever they turned away from God to sin, they were punished and died. There is no eternal security for the Corinthians. They may think eating food sacrificed to idols was no big thing. They may have thought participating in pagan rituals and ceremonies did not harm them. But these things put those Christians in danger. Whenever they looked to their own reason or strength, instead of clinging to God’s Word and power, they were ready to fall. The message here is to watch and wait, repent and return to God, believe no matter what happens and ask for God’s strength in times of trouble. When the Israelites repented, God forgave them their sin. When we were in bondage to sin, God sent his son Jesus. When we are tempted, God is with us. When we are tested, God will give us strength. In our time of trial, even when we are faithless, God is faithful. God is faithful.
You are a human being. You will be tempted, put to the test, brought to a time of trial. But know that God will not give you more than you can stand. God will be your strength and power. God will provide the way for you to endure it. Amen.
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